The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe
 

Podcast: June 15th 2005 (Download MP3)

Topics:

Issue #1. Update on Kansas Evolution Debate

Issue #2. Science or Fiction

Issue #3. Alternative Theories of Matter



Issue #1. Update on Kansas Evolution Debate

Evolution debate in Kan. prompts attacks

http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/11900235.htm

JOHN HANNA

Associated Press

TOPEKA, Kan. - A discussion about how evolution should be taught in public schools degenerated Wednesday into personal attacks among State Board of Education members.

The board is reviewing proposed standards drafted by three conservative members designed to expose students to more criticism of evolution in the classroom. During the discussion, four board members who want the standards to maintain their existing evolution-friendly tone assailed the proposal.

Bill Wagnon told the three conservative board members they were the "dupes" of intelligent design advocates, who presented what Wagnon said was bad science during public hearings in May.

"It is all based on absolute and total fraud," Wagnon said of the proposal.

But one of the three board members, Connie Morris, lectured the board's four moderates for not attending the public hearings in May, during which witnesses criticized evolutionary theory that natural chemical processes may have created the first building blocks of life, that all life has descended from a common origin and that man and apes share a common ancestor.

"Had you attended, you would have been informed," Morris said. "You would be sitting here as informed individuals and not arrogantly calling us dupes.

" Conservatives have a 6-4 majority, so much of what the three members proposed - if not all of it - is likely to survive.

The board didn't make a decision Wednesday about the standards, but it told a committee of educators to review the proposal. Board Chairman Steve Abrams, another one of the three members who drafted the proposal, said he also intended to have a second, external review it in July. That suggests the board won't vote until at least August.

Besides Abrams and Morris, helping draft the latest proposal was board member Kathy Martin.

The ongoing debate over how evolution should be taught has brought international attention to Kansas. The four days of hearings in May attracted journalists from Canada, France, Great Britain and Japan.

The standards determine how fourth-, seventh- and 10th graders are tested on science. They currently describe evolution as a key concept for students to learn before graduating from high school, treating it as the best explanation for how life developed and changed over time.

The proposed standards don't specifically mention intelligent design, except to say the standards don't take a position. But advocates of intelligent design, which says some features of the natural world are so complex and well-ordered that they are best explained by an intelligent cause, organized the case against evolution during the hearings.

Many scientists view intelligent design as a form of creationism, and national and state science groups boycotted the public hearings, saying they were rigged against evolution. As a result, no scientist testified in favor of evolution.

State law requires the board to update its academic standards regularly, setting up this year's debate over evolution.

In 1999, the Kansas board deleted most references to evolution from the science standards, bringing international condemnation and ridicule to Kansas. Elections the next year resulted in a less conservative board, which led to the current, evolution-friendly standards. Conservative Republicans recaptured the board's majority in 2004 elections.

Battles over evolution also have occurred in recent years in Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Circulated Monday was a newsletter from Morris, in which she derided evolution as an "age-old fairy tale," sometimes defended with "anti-God contempt and arrogance." She wrote that evolution is "a theory in crisis" and headlined one section of her newsletter "The Evolutionists are in Panic Mode!"



 

Issue #2. Science or Fiction



Each week our host will come up with three science news items, two genuine, one fictitious. He will challenge our panel of skeptics to sniff out the fake – and you can play along.

Follow up from 6/07/05 podcast:

Last week, Host, Steven Novella, crafted a fake news story of astronomers discovering the first earth-like planet around a neighboring star. Imagine his surprise when a few days later the following news item was reported. Where’s that million dollars, James Randi!



New Planet Discovered Orbiting Nearby Star
 By Associated Press

Mon Jun 13

WASHINGTON - A planet that may be Earth-like - but too hot for life as we know it - has been discovered orbiting a nearby star.

The discovery of the planet, with an estimated radius about twice that of Earth, was announced Monday at the National Science Foundation.

"This is the smallest extrasolar planet yet detected and the first of a new class of rocky terrestrial planets," Paul Butler of the Carnegie Institution in Washington said in a statement. "It's like Earth's bigger cousin.

" Geoffrey Marcy, professor of astronomy at the University of California, Berkeley, added: "Over 2,000 years ago, the Greek philosophers Aristotle and Epicurus argued about whether there were other Earth-like planets. Now, for the first time, we have evidence for a rocky planet around a normal star."

Though the researchers have no direct proof that the new planet is rocky, its mass means it is not a giant gas planet like Jupiter, they said. They estimated the planet's mass as 5.9 to 7.5 times that of Earth.

It is orbiting a star called Gliese 876, 15 light years from Earth, with an orbit time of just 1.94 Earth days. They estimated the surface temperature on the new planet at between 400 degrees and 750 degrees Fahrenheit.

Gliese 876 is a small, red star with about one-third the mass of the sun. The researchers said this is the smallest star around which planets have been discovered. In addition to the newly found planet the star has two large gas planets around it.

Butler said the researchers think that the most probable composition of the planet is similar to inner planets of this solar system - a nickel/iron rock.

Gregory Laughlin of the Lick Observatory at the University of California, Santa Cruz, said a planet of this mass could have enough gravity to hold onto an atmosphere. "It would still be considered a rocky planet, probably with an iron core and a silicon mantle. It could even have a dense steamy water layer."

Three other extrasolar planets believed to be of rocky composition have been reported, but they orbit a pulsar - the flashing corpse of an exploded star - rather than a normal type of star.



New Items for this week:

Item #1: South Korean doctors have successfully revived a dog who was preserved in cryogenic stasis for eleven days.

Item #2: Israeli Scientists grow a palm tree from a 2000 year old seed.

Item #3: In perhaps the first application of nanotechnology in medicine, scientist have attached cancer-fighting drugs to nanoparticles that target tumor cells.

So...which one is false? Follow this link to find out.


Issue #3. Alternative Theories of Matter

This is both scary and funny. Some religious faithful are now devising other alternate scientific theories to fit their Judeo-Christian worldview. See their new Theory of Matter:

http://www.commonsensescience.org/

...The atomistic view is not universally accepted, but is opposed by the Judeo-Christian and Muslim worldview with its underlying assumptions, the chief of these being the Law of Cause and Effect. This law is rejected both by ancient and modern atomists who insist, wrongly, that elementary particles are subject to the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, that they emit light spontaneously and move randomly, that life arose by chance and evolved into its current forms by chance processes. At the turn of the century, new discoveries in physics came so fast that scientists were unable to explain the experimental data solely on the basis of classical physics and the established laws of physics. So, around 1920, when atomists were able to explain newly discovered characteristics of light and matter by the use of mathematical equations (instead of physical models consistent with proven laws), modern science adopted the atomistic world view.

...Atomism is incompatible with Judeo-Christian and Muslim principles because atomism views matter as independent of God, either because it exists from eternity and denies creation by an Intelligent Designer, or because its motions and events are independent of control by a Sovereign Being.

Contradictions in Modern Physics

The modern theory of matter rests upon such supporting theories as the Standard Model of Elementary Particles, Quantum Mechanics, and the Special Theory of Relativity. After decades of work by thousands of physicists, the theory has "grown" until it can explain a very large body of physical phenomena. This has made the theory very successful; but the theory is not adequate or true because:

1. It is only a mathematical model consisting of equations and does not usually specify physical structure for elementary particles. Modern science has no idea what holds an electron together and simply assumes it hangs together on its own. On the other hand, CSS has developed a proper model of elementary particles and published (in a refereed journal of physics) an explanation for a balance of forces on the electron. 1. It frequently contradicts itself.

But the electron, proton, and neutron all have measured amounts of spin (angular momentum) and magnetic moment. These features can only exist because the particles have a finite, non-zero size. So, a self-contradiction of the common theory is evident: On one hand, the particles are said to be point-like; on the other hand, they are known to have a finite size (needed to have a spin, magnetic moment and the distribution of charge referenced in the next paragraph). This inconsistency in modern science is incompatible with a Judeo-Christian world view of consistency where expediency is rejected and contradictions are never allowed.

1. It provides no mechanism for such fundamental processes as the exchange of energy. The foundation of a rational theory is cause and effect. In a rational theory, everything happens for a reason and not just by chance. 1. It has to rely upon numerous assumptions.

Since the quantum electron has no physical structure, and no mechanism exists for exchanging energy or transmitting forces, then it is necessary to assume fundamental properties for the electron and proton: The quantum theory assumes that electrons and protons have intrinsic properties of spin, magnetic moment, stability, and inertial mass. The theory makes no attempt to derive them or relate them, but chooses such models that cannot relate its features: a point model is chosen for some occasions, and a wave model is chosen on others. The theory is unable to say if the essence of an electron is a particle or a wave; the theory can only say that an elementary particle is consistently inconsistent!